1 Jul 2026
Tochitură Dracula cu mămăliguță
The thing about being in an escorted tour to a country where one can't understand the language is that there is great reliance on the tour director. And should the tour director decided that his clients need not know what exactly they are eating, except to know the type of meat (chicken, fish, pork, beef) is good enough (because from his experience, most would just be interested in taking photos of their food and posting them on IG and not bother about the dishes), meant that I had to do A LOT of checking up about what this dish is.
After all that checks, I think (I am fairly confident) of identifying this dish as the Tochitura Dracula cu mamaliguta (or as google translates tells me - Dracula stew with mamaliguta).
This is a pork stew based dish at the Casa Vlad Dracu with mushrooms and this curious yellow slightly bouncy thing that I had initially took to be very very very dehydrated millet porridge. But then I had someone roll her eyes at me to remind me that millet is not a crop traditionally grown in Europe. So this yellow stuff couldn't be millet. It could be corn instead.
Indeed the yellow stuff is cornmeal. And I was quite blown away by it. The mamaliguta came quite unsalted, and nicely warmed to a very cosy temperature for a cold winter lunch and had this texture that is quite different from anything I have eaten before. I think I can eat a lot of mamaliguta.
Apparently, it is also a healthy alternative to refined carbohydrates.
30 Jun 2026
The Three-Body Problem | Cixin Liu | Bloomsbury Publishing
N年前我看上海版的《三体》是没看懂的。剧终，我的感觉是“都是一群疯子，只有史强是正常人“。当时我有想，看不懂或许是我的问题。因为觉得剧情挺拖拉啰嗦，第五集之后我是以双倍然后四倍的速度看剧的。只有汪淼在三体游戏的那些戏，我才以正常速度看剧。
后来NF为了宣传他们家版的《三体》，开场戏在很多平台都能看见。我当时在想，这什么东西啊？有够夸张的。
看了这本翻译的《三体》，我想我大致上是了解这故事了，也大概能从心理学角度理解叶文洁为何这么反人类。明明被告戒了不要回应，却好傻好天真地自以为天外来的更高文明体可以解救堕落的人类。
上海版的《三体》改编的剧本，似乎转移了导致叶文洁做出对人类可能是毁灭性决定的最大诱因。
不知怎么的，虽然《三体》被标榜是科幻小说，但读着读着，我竟然觉得作者是借天外文明入侵的外衣来批判一些社会天真的盲目地对外来的思想事物存在不切实际的幻想、期望与期待。
24 Jun 2026
Sheraton Bucharest Hotel
シェラトンホテルはマリオットブランドのプレミアムホテルカテゴリーに属し、フォーポイントホテルよりも一段階上の価格帯に位置する。
22 Jun 2026
A Short History of the World in 50 Lies | Natasha Tidd | O'Mara Books
A Short History of the World in 50 Lies is a pocket-sized book that is light and quite suitable to read during commutes. It is also a good way to encourage readers to be interested in history through bite-sized snippets of parts of historical happenings that are deemed 'lies'.
This book is written in an easily understood manner and can be an engaging read, as each 'lie' is only a few pages.
It is however, also not a book written in the scholarly fashion, in that claims of what the author has introduced as 'truths' in relation to the 'lies' are also not referenced to.
18 Jun 2026
15 Jun 2026
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop | Satoshi Yagisawa | Harper Perennial
『森崎書店の日々』の英語訳はとても人気があるので、ベストセラーリストでずっと目にしていました。私は、それが一体何で話題になっているのかを知り、読んでみることにした。
やや批判的で皮肉に聞こえるかもしれないが、結論として、『森崎書店の日々』を読んだ後でも、なぜこれほど人気があるのか理解できない。
まず、本のタイトルが少し誤解を招くと思った。本の約半分は森崎書店を舞台にしておらず、そこで描かれた場面も特に重要ではなかった。書評をいくつか読んだところ、批評家たちが「森崎書店での日々」を、気分が落ち込んでいる時に読むべき本として勧めているのを目にしました。
おそらくそうでしょう。「聞かなかった場所」を読んだ後に「森崎書店での日々」を読んだせいか、両作品の雰囲気のコントラストが大きすぎて、「森崎書店での日々」の雰囲気を十分に感じ取れなかったのかもしれません。
13 Jun 2026
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